SHEEPDOG(8)                          System Manager's Manual                          SHEEPDOG(8)



NAME
       sheepfs  -  A  pseudo file system exports both Sheepdog's internal state as well as Sheep‐
       dog's storage

SYNOPSIS
       sheepfs [OPTION]... MOUNTPOINT

DESCRIPTION
       sheepfs - Sheepdog is a distributed storage system for QEMU. It provides highly  available
       block  level  storage volumes to virtual machines.  Sheepdog supports advanced volume man‐
       agement features such as snapshot, cloning, and thin  provisioning.  The  architecture  of
       Sheepdog is fully symmetric; there is no central node such as a meta-data server.

       The  server  daemon is called sheep(8).  A command line utility is available via dog(8). A
       pseudo file system is available via sheepfs(8). QEMU virtual machines use the sheep daemon
       via a block driver available in qemu(1).

       Sheepfs  is a FUSE-based pseudo file system in userland to access both Sheepdog's internal
       state (for e.g, cluster info, vdi list) as well as Sheepdog's high reliable storage.

       The idea here is that its sometimes useful that we can envision our  interaction  with  an
       Sheepdog's object in terms of a directory structure and filesystem operations.

       People  might be mostly interested into sheepfs's volume directory, which export VM's vol‐
       ume as a pseudo block file in your local file system hierarchy, which can be used as

       1. a big file abstraction, which is actually backed by Sheepdog's storage, distributed  in
       the cluster.

       2.  a  loop  device file, which you can mount wherever you want to use it as a file system
       backed up by Sheepdog.

       3. a loop device file for some VM's image, which you want to access(RW) its internal data.

       4. storage media for other hypervisor, such as XEN

       This file abstraction integrates well into kernel's pagecache.

OPTIONS
       -a, --address
              specify the sheep address (default: 127.0.0.1)

       -d, --debug
              enable debug output (implies -f)

       -f, --foreground
              sheepfs run in the foreground

       -k, --pagecache
              use local kernel's page cache to access volume

       -o, --objectcache
              enable object cache of the connected sheep daemon

       -p, --port
              specify the sheep port (default: 7000)

       -h, --help
              display this help and exit


DEPENDENCIES
       Sheepdog requires QEMU 0.13.z or later and Corosync 1.y.z.


FILES
       none


SEE ALSO
       sheep(8), dog(8), qemu(1), corosync_overview(8)


AUTHORS
       This software is developed by the Sheepdog community which may be reached via mailing list
       at <sheepdog AT lists.org>.

                                            2014-09-29                                SHEEPDOG(8)